


Hell and All Its Wonders

by calrissian18



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Beltane, Body Part Kinks, Jealousy, M/M, Poison, Possessive Behavior, Warning in Notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 14:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poison courses through his veins. It always has, only these days it’s quite a bit more literal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell and All Its Wonders

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER warning in the end notes if you need it.
> 
> Written for hds_beltane on lj.

“Your head is bothering you.”  
  
It isn’t a question. Severus scowls and pulls away the spindly fingers that are rubbing over his crinkled forehead, fingertips coming away slick with oil. The Malfoy boy is a tall column of white and green, arms slatted over his chest as he stares into the gloom of Severus’ office. The mass of scar tissue at the base of Severus’ neck pulses in time with the click of his swallow. He sees the figure made of sharp angles leave out of his periphery and goes back to marking the idiot third years’ papers. He leaves oil smudges on the topmost parchment.  
  
He loses himself to the flawed and truly vapid theorizing of thirteen-year-olds, only pulled out of it by heavy _thunks_ at the edge of his desk. He glances up to find a self-brewed Headache Draught and the hodgepodge of plastic and lenses that Malfoy is always pushing on him.  
  
Severus’ mouth curves bitterly as he glares at them. He hates the damn things. Despite the multitude of enchantments he’s thrown at the horrid things, they refuse to sit right. Alternately feeling too big and too small for his face. The frames are thick and black while the lenses are small and rectangular. It’s an odd mish-mash and he feels a fool wearing him. Unfortunately, he’s all but abused the charm to sharpen his eyesight – which only lasts so long and could cause permanent damage with repeated casting besides. He sneers down at the blasted things.  
  
Malfoy doesn’t stay to see his decision. He bustles off to the back room – the storeroom – which, sometime early in the year, he’d made his mission to organize. It’s a Sisyphean task. Severus has the good judgment not to say so.  
  
After only three more lines of scribbled rubbish, he relents to the bloody glasses. Everything comes into sharp relief. The scrawl before him is still indecipherable as well as clearly written by a dullard but it’s in focus now. Malfoy walks back into his office to add another three vials to his shelves, no doubt rummaged out of the corner of his storeroom. Severus frowns. “I am not a child and I do not need a surrogate parent to _look after me_.”  
  
Malfoy perks a disbelieving brow, noting the glasses with a smirk.  
  
_Limbo_.  
  
During his recuperation in the hospital wing, McGonagall had seen fit to offer the Malfoy boy his post as a temporary position. With the full understanding that Severus would take over once he was well enough. Malfoy had agreed all too readily. He took to visiting Severus at the blasted, uncomfortable cot he was forced to sleep on at the start of each day. He updated him on his intricate lesson plans and asked for input, respectful and willing to concede or compromise on nearly every point. Severus had had to admit that the boy wasn’t a complete dunce. Perhaps, even, that he was more than suited to teach his course. Temporarily.  
  
The only issue Severus had with him was that after he had been released from his extended stay in hospital, Malfoy hadn’t _gone_. At first it had abutted the logical course of action. McGonagall had wanted Malfoy to stay on for a week or so to make sure Severus was back at full steam and he may have had one or two incidents of light-headedness but, aside from that, he was as well as he ever had been. But Malfoy still hadn’t left.  
  
Halfway through the semester, as they are now, he shows no signs of bowing out of the assistant professorship he’s manipulatively slid his way into. The boy is certainly after his job and Severus walks into his classroom with blacker and blacker expressions each day that he finds Malfoy sitting at his desk. He acts as though it is perfectly acceptable to be there, letting the drone of Severus’ lessons wash over him while his long-fingered hands mark parchments. He’ll occasionally offer a wry smile at something Severus has said, grey eyes gleaming, but he knows better than to interrupt.  
  
Since October, Malfoy has been the one to walk the paths around the desks to breathe down the students’ necks. The cold weather has made Severus’ stiff leg act up so he gladly relents the task to him. Pomfrey tells him it’s a sign of getting older, that the venom has weakened him enough to make his muscles protest every which way and his age has left him incapable of fighting it off. Severus informs her it’s a sign of her incompetence.  
  
Malfoy has no shame and he lives more in Severus’ rooms than his own, taking his tea there, preparing the subjects they plan to cover in the months to come, pushing Severus’ glasses towards him with annoying persistence and brewing muscle relaxants while frowning over Severus’ leg. The only tolerable quality Malfoy has is that he knows how to be quiet. He is not one of those obnoxious students that need to fill the silence.  
  
He sits in the slouching armchair in the far end of the room, feet pulled up in the cushion with him and his lap forming a makeshift desk. Strands of spun gold curtain his forehead and he chews the corner of his mouth as he shuffles through the parchments in front of him, organizing them in some imperceptible order with a spit-slick finger.  
  
Severus scowls at himself and pulls his gaze away.  
  
_Lust_.  
  
It is Malfoy’s hands more than anything. They are long and refined, the hands of an artisan rather than an aristocrat. They draw Severus’ attention to them from across a room, unstoppering a vial or stirring a cauldron. Malfoy has a habit of resting his strong fingers on the opposite page when reading, palm kissing the vellum. He breathes each line in with bright eyes, his teeth creating tiny indents in his lower lip.  
  
The sixth and seventh year girls quiver when he stands behind them, leaning over smaller shoulders to give instruction. Severus imagines himself as a student, Malfoy’s chest pressing into his back, heavy and warm, long fingers skimming down his forearms while he slips his own hand beneath his covers at night.  
  
_Gluttony_.  
  
Severus watches him. It’s still enough that he can hear the cadence of Malfoy’s breaths. His gaze is gauging. “Why are you still here?” The words twist out of his mouth with suspicion as though he can’t bring himself to trust Malfoy’s there with him. The sound of it says he doesn’t want him to be when, truthfully, all he wants is _more_. More time, more guarded looks, more glancing brushes of skin.  
  
Malfoy leans back in his seat, making a note on one of his pages. Concentration looks good on him, it smoothes out the wrinkles in his brow and his mouth often drops open, lower lip glistening. He looks up blankly. “You should join me in the Great Hall tonight,” he says simply, sidestepping Severus’ outburst. He has an obnoxious habit of doing that.  
  
It’s undeserving of a response. Malfoy knows he doesn’t leave the dungeons. The cretins of this school tend to ogle the scar tissue at the base of his neck while shooting uneasy glances at his back. They whisper behind hands as though they’re unbreakable shields, making sharp comments about him and what it must have felt like to have venomous fangs sink into your skin. They never come close to the reality of it.  
  
Malfoy pulls him back into the present. “You can’t hide out forever.”  
  
Severus is tempted to snap back that he most certainly _can_ but that would imply he agreed with Malfoy’s assessment that he was ‘hiding out.’ And he absolutely is not.  
  
Malfoy sighs. His bare feet dig into the carpet as he pads into the next room after waiting for an answer that doesn’t come.  
  
_Greed_.  
  
Malfoy brings others into his sanctuary, because he is the patron saint of lost causes. He takes the least redeemable people and subjects them to his brand of friendship, which is truly nothing more than quiet company. The couch is sunken and Malfoy sits to one side of it, crossing his legs under him. Next to him, drenched in silvery streaks of blood, is the Slytherin ghost. A murderer dressed in the chains of his penitence.  
  
He comes and goes as he pleases. He comes when Malfoy is in Severus’ rooms, he goes when he isn’t.  
  
The ghost makes his skin itch but Malfoy seems completely indifferent to his lack of pulse. The only time he takes any sort of pause is when he stops short and the Baron drifts through him, causing a sheet of ice to cascade down his spine. The Baron laughs cruelly and Malfoy looks at him with a bemused expression. Severus always watches the shiver of his shoulders with a rough swallow.  
  
He’s not sure the Baron is fond of Malfoy but he steals him away all the same. It rubs Severus the wrong way. Malfoy spends nearly every waking moment with him but he still resents even a second of that time being snatched out of his hands. The Baron seeps in through the walls, bringing a chill with him, and commands in a hoarse, creaking voice, “Chess, Mr. Malfoy.” Before he took to haunting Severus’ rooms, Severus had never heard him speak. He seems to only use clipped, imperative sentences from what Severus can tell.  
  
Malfoy’s lips quirk, a challenge in his amused grey eyes. He pushes himself out of his seat in Severus’ office and mutters under his breath, “Yes, Your Bloodyness.”  
  
The door doesn’t latch behind him as they move into the next room. He sinks into the armchair that sets his back to Severus. The Baron shuffles his tunic over the puff of his trousers and sits to the side of him, the chess set already arranged between them. His gaunt cheeks are curtained by the silvery cascade of jaw-length curls. He’s a haunted-looking man. They’re hours into the match before either of them speak and Severus’ attention is buried deep in his work.  
  
The Baron’s chin is dipped, looking into Malfoy’s face while he chooses his next strike. “Have you told your,” he sniffs, “ _paramour_ why you remain here?” His dark eyes flash over to Severus’ own, which had come up at the first sound of words, giving him few doubts over whom he means.  
  
Severus drops his gaze.  
  
“You know I haven’t.” Malfoy’s tone is short, either from the interruption or the question.  
  
A wide smile splits the Baron’s face and a feeling of foreboding slips down Severus’ back. “Shall I go and inform—”  
  
Something clinks down piercingly, like chisel on stone, the sound of Malfoy physically slamming down his chess piece. “I think you would come to regret that, _Guilhem_.”  
  
Far from looking intimidated, the Baron – _Guilhem_ – merely chuckles. “If you are fool enough to resort to threats then I suppose I shall keep my seat. Even if you are being terribly fussy.”  
  
Malfoy’s toes curl over the edge of the table. “It is my prerogative.”  
  
The Baron’s gaze slices over to him again and this time Severus doesn’t pretend he hasn’t been watching them unabashedly.  
  
_Anger_.  
  
Severus’ stiff leg protests with every step as he drags himself up to the Headmistress’ office. Malfoy is a silent guard to his progress. He stares down at his own feet as they make the trek, refusing to wait for him to return. Minerva is seated behind the testosterone-heavy length of the Headmaster’s desk. She purses her lips as he limps his way in. Potter and a man in crimson robes Severus has never laid eyes on stand on the side closest to him, looking solemn.  
  
Severus settles into the visitor’s seat, covering for any discomfort he may feel by keeping his eyes fixed on Minerva. Malfoy stands at his shoulder, a reassuring shadow. Potter doesn’t so much as glance at him. Their rivalry is far from repaired and the years apart have only let the misunderstandings that are at the core of their relationship fester and swell. Malfoy still looks as if he could pass for sixteen but Potter looks older, if none the wiser, his hair greying at the temples. He’s barely twenty and he already looks as if he’s lived too many lives.  
  
He licks his lower lip and shifts his gaze to the man standing next to him – no longer a boy searching for direction but a man giving orders. “We would like to offer you an Order of Merlin. First Class, of course,” he adds, seemingly for something _to_ add after his declaration is met with silence.  
  
Severus’ lips twist. “I wasn’t aware I was in need of an ugly paperweight.” Just like a Ministry to assuage its guilt with prizes. If he deserves this then so does Malfoy and no one’s even made eye contact with him.  
  
Potter coughs, either to cover for a laugh or his discomfort. His lips tilt up in a half-hearted smile. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “I didn’t expect you’d care much. But people need to know. Even if they don’t understand it now, history needs to reflect the way things really were.” There’s determination in the set of Potter’s jaw and Severus knows that is not something to grapple with. He’s seen enough men fall to it.  
  
He can’t say he’s not surprised to see Potter playing politics, saying without saying in front of this Ministry lackey – that Severus now understands is there more for the Ministry’s benefit than Potter’s – to suck it up and accept. This is not for him so much as it is public perception.  
  
Potter’s gaze sidles over to his Ministry guard a second time. “Consider it a small token of the wizarding world’s appreciation.” He tilts his head and decides, “Of _my_ appreciation.” He rubs his palms into his thighs and grinds into sincerity. “My mum—my mum would have been proud.”  
  
Something _twists_ in Severus’ chest at the mention of _her_. He stands from his seat with a jerky nod. He’ll accept Potter’s terms even if he doesn’t respect the underhanded means Potter’s used to get it.  
  
Potter nods back and he thinks the boy understands he’s burned a bridge. The clench of his jaw says it’s worth it.  
  
Malfoy follows him out without a backward glance, catching his arm in the hallway, concern in the curve of his frown.  
  
Severus snaps. “That is _enough_ , Mr. Malfoy—”  
  
“Draco,” Malfoy says quietly, by rote.  
  
Severus’ fingers shake and he curls them into his palms, long fingernails biting into his skin. “ _Mr. Malfoy_ , I do not need you here. Have not needed you here for months and yet you _will not_ leave.” Fury makes the lines of him vibrate. “I want you _out_ of my offices, out of my classroom, out of this school.”  
  
Malfoy stands with the words for a moment, letting them sink into him. His eyes flick over Severus’ face, looking deeper than what’s at the surface, and he nods once. He says flatly, “Okay.”  
  
He walks away, quiet as he always is but without a fight as he never is. It’s anathema to a Malfoy. They always fight, not openly or courageously, but passionately and until the end. But he doesn’t fight this.  
  
_Heresy_.  
  
His eyes are unfocused, blunt thumbs pressing into his temples. His glasses hang loosely between his fingers. He hasn’t worn them since the last time Malfoy dropped them into his lap. His leg _aches_. “Where is the Malfoy boy?”  
  
Severus’ attention snaps to. His head jerks up.  
  
The Baron’s jaw shifts from side to side, clenched tightly. Severus smirks, asking after him is tantamount to admitting he _cares_ about the answer.  
  
Severus eases a hand over his wrinkled brow. “He—”  
  
“Is not in any of his usual hiding places,” is snapped back at him, as though the Baron had been expecting a lie. His eyes dart restlessly around the room as though he believes Malfoy might be hiding in a corner of it. They still on the mat by the door. He frowns. “His boots aren’t sitting by the door.” Something like fear has clawed its way into his tone toward the end. He restlessly grinds the fabric of his bloody tunic between his fingers, his chains clinking. He snarls, violence coming into his dark eyes. “What have you done?”  
  
Severus only answers idiot questions from his students. He pushes out of his chair and pads into his bedroom.  
  
A voice drifts in through the walls, softer than he’d believed it could go, “You know that boy was in love with you.”  
  
The ache in his leg jumps to his chest.  
  
“He will return,” the Baron says, as sure as gospel.  
  
Severus doesn’t believe it. He’s not sure he wants to. He’s not sure he can survive it.  
  
_Violence_.  
  
Beltane is a tradition that panders to over-sexed idiots with pyromaniac tendencies and it comes as a surprise to exactly no one that Severus does not indulge in it. The Malfoy boy had been partial to it though, buttoning up his shirt over his rail thin chest and trying to cajole Severus into accompanying him. The pearly white scars had peeked out before the fabric covered them, trying to guilt him into agreeing. Severus had always held fast.  
  
It’s deep into the afternoon, his attention drawn away over and over to the veins of Malfoy’s wrists, the moon-pale skin of his palms and the prickle of the fine hair on his hands when the breeze would blow cool through the dungeon halls. It’s too much to ignore and Severus bundles himself in high-collared robes and leaves Hogwarts to Apparate out onto the moors.  
  
He can see the fires blazing even from a distance and he walks the sprawling hills without thought or urgency. The soft lull of constant singing drifts in with the winds while smoke dances into the pastel blue sky. Raucous laughter greets him as he reaches the plane of all the celebration. Severus twines his way through the half-naked bodies and the flow of elder wine. The heat of the many bonfires is unbearable, wrapping over every inch of him and even his Cooling Charm does nothing to break its grip.  
  
He falls back to a parade of dancing women and nearly steps on the man sitting in the grass behind him. He turns with a sneer only to find Malfoy leaning back against the trunk of a willow tree. His lips are twisted in amusement and he stares up at Severus with wonder in his eyes. He has one leg tucked up under his bent knee, his cheek resting flat against it and Severus has seen him curled up like that too many times to count.  
  
His fingers are loosely wrapped around the stem of his goblet and Severus can smell the sick-sweet tang of the wine. His cheeks are just the slightest bit pink and his eyes are hooded. “You look wholly out of place,” he says and there’s laughter in every syllable.  
  
Severus stiffens. Though he’d come for him, he hadn’t thought he would actually get to lay eyes on the boy.  
  
Malfoy gestures to the closest bonfire, where wizards and witches are twirling around the stones that make up its pit. “Will you jump through the flames?”  
  
“I prefer to watch others catch fire rather than do so myself,” Severus says sourly, staring at the revelry with a judgmental sniff.  
  
Malfoy barks out a laugh, made heartier by the wine. Locks of his hair caress the apple of his cheek, swaying slightly in the breath of the wind. A leaf flutters down between them. The willow is expansive but browning up. Malfoy pulls his leg further into his body.  
  
Severus admits, “This is not what I consider… enjoyable.”  
  
Malfoy’s lips quirk up further and Severus stares at the bob of his throat as he drinks from his goblet. His eyes are lazy and some of the good humor in them has died. “I wasn’t aware you found anything enjoyable.”  
  
There is only one answer to that and he knows Malfoy is trying to goad him into saying it. That some part of him needs to hear it spoke aloud. Severus can’t grant him that relief. Not anymore. He offers the only thought he’s had in the months past. “You’ve left.”  
  
The pad of Malfoy’s finger traces the rim of his cup, gathering the red dye into the whorls. An unhappy grin ambles across his cheeks. “You asked me to.” He raises his cup to Severus.  
  
It’s karmic retribution that his habit of lashing out at the easiest target when he’s feeling angry or vulnerable has yielded the result of him losing the only confidant he’s ever had. His pride won’t let him say anything more than, “You were a competent Potions Master in your own right.”  
  
Malfoy laughs, long and loud. He stands in a graceless tangle of limbs. Severus can practically see the blood pumping away beneath his pinked cheeks. “It’s what I’ve always dreamed of, you know?” He sways in close. “To be told I am _competent_ by the man I love.” There’s a sad note of truth there that Severus suspects he’d meant to keep hidden. As though he expected that was the best he would get from him. Severus starts to speak when Malfoy pats him on the arm and says with a weak twitch of his lips, “I hope you find something _enjoyable_ , Severus.”  
  
The discordant notes of low singing have begun again and Malfoy’s voice slips away into it. The firelight licks over the side of his face, flickers over his skin like a battering pulse. Malfoy stands outside the ring of stones and Severus watches the rise and fall of his back before he leaps and is swallowed by the flames.  
  
He watches them twist and coil until well into the night, red eating into yellow and fading into orange. He watches it turn from a live beast to a smoking corpse and feels the same progression begin in him, from his insides out.  
  
That night sleep comes to him in inconsistent waves, his consciousness riding the crests of them. His head aches from straining his eyes and his leg aches from the venom that twines through muscle and flesh and bone. He gives up on sleep after his third dream of a face laughing at him from the flames. He marks papers and if his grading has gotten harsher and his patience is so thin it regularly snaps then that can be blamed on the stifling heat that’s swept in through his rooms over the last few days.  
  
He has a detention to oversee in only a few hours for two of his Slytherin fifth years. He’s overheard them griping about the pace of his lessons and wondering when Professor Malfoy would return and – after controlling the urge to hex them – he’d assigned them to six before-and-after-class sessions with him where he would undoubtedly be making them scrub out entrails.  
  
The flash of Malfoy’s lively grin from the night before morphs into the laughing face full of fire and Severus rubs at his eyes. He wanders from room to room and back before he realizes where he is. Anger erupts beneath his skin and a wall of shelves explodes in the half-tidied storeroom.  
  
“What did you say to him?”  
  
Only some sixth sense keeps Severus from jumping. The Baron blasts a welcome gust of cold air at his back. “That is not any concern of _yours_ ,” he says tightly. Though it is. They are the only ones who care, the only ones whose concern it is.  
  
“You didn’t ask him back,” the Baron says with a sudden snort.  
  
Severus squares his shoulders against the attack, the words that call him a fool for being unable to trust Malfoy with something so simple as a true feeling. “I do not need lectures from dead things.”  
  
“You have an affinity for dead things,” is the retort. The Baron’s gaze flashes around at the jars of specimens kept preserved in formaldehyde. He huffs out twisted laughter. “Clearly you need a lecture from some source. If I’m all that’s offering, I’d take it,” he says, the words burrowing into Severus’ skin like a knife to the hilt. “Get him back, Snape.” It’s not a suggestion.  
  
The year has loafed by with unprecedented stillness. The quiet of his rooms is of the wrong sort, like it’s forgotten the soothing slope of its rolls and curves as it sweeps in to blanket the empty space now that Malfoy’s no longer sitting in the middle of it.  
  
The Baron isn’t the only ghost that won’t let him be either. Severus often rubs his fingertips over the imperceptible indentations left in his desk where Malfoy’s quill has come and gone, the ones in which his own quill tip will fall into without warning. The infectious sound of his soft and rumbling laughter lingers in the undisturbed air of the parlor. The warmth of his skin, of the hand that would squeeze his shoulder, burns through him in the middle of the night, settling at the ache in his leg.  
  
Severus wraps a dressing gown around his thin pajamas and limps out of the dungeons. It’s early enough that he won’t have to deal with running into another living soul. It’s cool tonight and the snaking of the wind through the trees sounds like a distant and foreboding growl. The breeze twines around his ankles, billows the hem of his cloak. The light of the gibbous moon bathes patches of grass and rotted bits of log in cool colors. The stars are out in full force despite the slight cloud cover.  
  
Severus watches the lapping of the waves and the quiet is settling over his shoulders in a way that fits. He can’t stop the way it makes him look about for _him_.  
  
Staring at him from under a hulking tree, shadows falling in slats over his arms and moonlight washing over his face, are familiar grey eyes. It isn’t real because it can’t be. Severus almost turns away back to the shelter of the castle when he sees the tilt of soft pink lips form a half smile. Severus steps towards him before he can think of a reason not to. “I was coming to find you,” he says and there’s something pulling at the would-be easiness of it.  
  
Beneath Severus’ soles is the squish-squash of soft mossy undergrowth. The way the moonlight shimmers over them makes everything feel murky, like he’s trying to muddle through some underwater world. It feels like an unreality, a dream within a dream. “Why are you here?” He sounds sharp, accusing, and he has no right to it but he _hates_ Malfoy in ways he can’t rationalize. For giving him something only to take it away, he supposes.  
  
Malfoy shrugs. “Longbottom was foisting off a few ingredients your stores don’t need. Night-Blooming fluxweed,” he says with a grin, “I almost envy you.”  
  
They both _feel_ older and Severus’ weak leg shakes under his weight. “Why would you need it?”  
  
It’s the subtle revelation of coveted information that rounds Malfoy’s face out with a happiness that isn’t quite. “Durmstrang’s in a bleaker climate than you have here.”  
  
Severus blinks. “You’re their new Potions Master.”  
  
Malfoy leans into the trunk behind him and his body moves just the way it always has, with incomplete awareness of itself that isn’t quite awkward but neither is it confident. Severus knows there’s no part of his mind that could recreate it. It’s unique to Malfoy, his alone. “Hogwarts had theirs back.”  
  
Severus snorts, reaching for the cadence their conversations had once upon a time. When they’d deigned to have them. “How is teaching Potions to ungrateful dunderheads under your own steam?”  
  
Malfoy smiles back, but it’s pained and he says quickly, as though he expects they might be interrupted soon, “I wanted to apologize to you.” The furrow of Severus’ brow must give away his confusion. “I wasn’t sure if it was something I could, _should_ , say in an owl. What I told you, it was unfair to you. I knew what you’d been through, I knew you were hardly—well. I shouldn’t have asked something of you I knew full well you weren’t capable of giving. I am sorry for putting you in the position I did.”  
  
Severus knows he’s broken, that there are jagged edges inside him even he hasn’t found yet, but he has never wanted Malfoy to know it. He bristles. “I am not _incapable_ —”  
  
Malfoy flinches back. “I wasn’t implying—” he derails helplessly, “Of course, you’re right, Severus. It was insensitive of me and I apologize if there was ever anything I did that made you feel less than comfortable in my presence.”  
  
Severus can feel the thread of this slipping through his fingers. “I’ve never felt—You’ve done nothing wrong.”  
  
A smile flitters briefly over Malfoy’s face. “Thank you for that, Severus.” There’s a heavy relief that sinks to the bottom lows of his words. He pushes off the tree behind him, lighter, more aware of what the angles of his body are capable of. “I won’t subject you to my company any longer. I appreciate you taking the time to let me say my piece.”  
  
Severus watches him go, not knowing how he would go about calling him back. He has a detention to get to.  
  
Hours later, after Severus’ day is long done, the Baron is sitting on his couch, on the scratchy upholstery he can’t feel. He moves his hands like he’s going to crack his knuckles, only they don’t do that anymore. Severus can remember watching Malfoy slide his fingers together, hook them, invert them, imagining himself submitting to the whims of them. The Baron barely looks up. “Did you win him over?”  
  
Severus throws the heaviest book he can find. The Baron flickers away before he gets the satisfaction of watching it phase through him.  
  
_Fraud_.  
  
Malfoy returns at the Baron’s behest towards the end of the year. He had harassed every portrait he could find until he’d come across one that had a sister painting at Durmstrang. Malfoy curls his toes into his scratchy upholstery and Severus can’t watch him _be_ , familiar, like he’s never _not_ been. He looks away while the Baron gives a sharp victory call at capturing Malfoy’s rook. Malfoy reads while the Baron takes his turn, devouring Potions journals like he’s _hungry_ for them. He ticks off paragraphs with his quill, writes notes in the margins and draws boxes around important lines of text he wants to remember. His hair has gotten longer and it still hangs in front of his eyes distractingly.  
  
“Your move, scallywag.”  
  
Malfoy shifts forward on his cushion with a grin and his eyes brighten as they fly across the board, winding through his possible moves.  
  
The Baron leans away, watching him as intensely as Malfoy is his pieces. “You seem in high spirits today, Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
The white of Malfoy’s teeth flash behind his lips. “It’s good to be back.” His eyes flicker almost imperceptibly over to Severus.  
  
The Baron’s chest swells with breath he no longer needs. “I suspect regular sex.”  
  
Malfoy laughs outright.  
  
“Tell me about the boy.”  
  
There’s a snigger and Malfoy says, “Shall I?” He forgets all about the game before him and closes his eyes, settling back into the cushions. “He’s young, freckled from the sun and he gets a lot of it. Professional Quidditch player, he is,” Malfoy dreams up, his grin growing. “Curly, sandy blond hair that gets floppy when he sweats. And he sweats _a lot_.” Malfoy licks skinny, coral pink lips. “Thin but not too much, muscled but not too much, with a flat stomach and strong thighs, smooth hip bones—”  
  
Severus must make some sound because Malfoy’s eyes snap open and he looks over at him. Severus snorts. “And here I thought you valued brains over brawn.”  
  
Malfoy licks his lip, shoots a hummingbird-quick glance over at the Baron. He seems torn between unease and something else Severus can’t identify. “Nope,” he says finally, popping his mouth on the ‘p’ sound. “That was only ever a smokescreen to get into your pants.” He stares at Severus, looks at him in a way that no one ever has. His mouth curves into a rotated crescent. “You’re too pretty for your own good.”  
  
Severus’ face shutters. He knows what his looks are, has heard Malfoy rhapsodize over his complete opposite only a moment before – tanned where he is pale, young where he is old, athletic where he is weak, blond where he is black, muscled where he is lanky – but he’d never thought Malfoy would be one to poke fun at them.  
  
Malfoy looks over at him, head lolling back and he knows what Severus is thinking. Severus knows that he knows. “You think I’m making fun?” Malfoy rubs long fingers over his eyes. “I’m not, you know.” He sounds tired and distant. “I don’t know what it is about you. What it always was. I know you saw the way I looked at you—” He smiles, like they’re sharing a secret while his eyes track Severus’ own.  
  
It compels Severus to answer back, “You saw the way I looked back.”  
  
Malfoy’s smile widens. “You’re ugly pretty. I don’t know how else to explain it.” He chuckles once. “You’re a work of fucking art, Severus. I would not change one bloody thing about you. But art isn’t always pretty. You’re not, in the same way that you are.” Severus holds himself stiffly. “I’ve always wanted to do the strangest things to you, the ugly pretty bits of you. I spent all of sixth year fantasizing about biting the end of your nose.”  
  
It shocks a laugh out of him and he imagines Malfoy leaning over him, leaning into him, his long fingers wrapped around the arms of his chair, holding himself steady and still. He imagines a nose, lips skimming up his neck, his jaw, his mouth, before Malfoy’s breaks open and his teeth clench down on the tip of his nose. It’s sexy in ways it shouldn’t be.  
  
Malfoy grins. “You regret opening this door, don’t you?”  
  
“No,” Severus says.  
  
Malfoy squints back at him and there’s joy in the crinkles of his narrowing eyes. “You should wear your glasses,” he says slowly. “I’ve always liked the look of them on you.”  
  
Severus doesn’t know if he believes him or if Malfoy’s only trying to take care of him, in the Malfoy-way he always does. He looks away from the earnestness in his face and realizes the Baron is watching them, grinning sly and knowing. Severus clears his throat. “The Baron’s exerted so much energy to get you here and you’re all but ignoring him.”  
  
Malfoy’s smile softens and his eyes don’t leave Severus’ face. “I’ve missed him too.”  
  
He sleeps on Severus’ couch and he’s a calm sleeper. He doesn’t toss and turn, snuffle or drool. He closes his eyes and fades away like snuffing out a candle. Severus watches him unblinkingly, not the least bit tempted to doze himself. He stares at the rise and fall of Malfoy’s chest until the wee hours of the morning. Until grey eyes slide open and a mouth warmed by a smile parts to say, “You’re wearing your glasses.”  
  
Severus is caught in the reflection of Malfoy’s perfect eyes. “I’ve been told they’re…” he hedges.  
  
“Dashing,” Malfoy finishes, touching the sallow skin of his cheek, the curve of his lips only deepening.  
  
“I want you.” And Severus has no idea why it’s taken years to own up to the simple truth of that.  
  
The sleep that had been clinging to Malfoy starts to fall away and he says, “How?” in a sleep-scratchy voice. Severus shuffles his fingertips through the strands of hair that constantly break free from behind the tuck of Malfoy’s ears. They’ve taunted him for years. “How do you want me?”  
  
Severus swallows but he doesn’t break away. No part of him breaks away. “In every way.”  
  
Malfoy smiles so wide Severus sees teeth. “I suppose I’ll have to put off my Quidditch player a while longer then.”  
  
Severus snorts. “I suppose you shall. He should know he doesn’t get to put his mouth on you.”  
  
Malfoy rolls his lips into his mouth. “Mmm, he’s been told. He knows with one hundred percent certainty that you are the only person who gets to put his mouth on me.” Malfoy smoothes his hands over Severus’ shoulders, wraps strong fingers around his neck, squeezes to let him know he’s there. “Do you know what that means?” he asks softly, happily. Severus’ lips twitch and he jerks his head to the side in negation. “You should put your mouth on me.”  
  
Severus leans into him. Malfoy’s skin is warm and he smells like spring and rain and grass and new beginnings and Severus breathes him in. He glides his lips over Malfoy’s untouched skin and draws his heavy lower lip into his mouth, licks a stripe across it and Malfoy laughs joy into his mouth. “Draco,” Severus sighs back into him. Malfoy pulls him closer, holds him dear and their tongues slide together slow and artful.  
  
A knock on the door to his rooms interrupts them. Severus looks back over his shoulder. He doesn’t have visitors apart from Draco and a ghost. And Draco doesn’t knock. Neither does the ghost.  
  
“Severus.”  
  
He sighs, drags himself up and limps over to the door. “Pomfrey,” he says sourly, looking into the lines of her face. She’s worse for wear, the war taking its toll by hiding in the folds of her skin.  
  
Her eyes flicker behind Severus, undoubtedly to where Malfoy is still stretched out on his couch. “You haven’t been back to the hospital wing as I’ve asked.”  
  
“You couldn’t fix my leg,” Severus snarls.  
  
Concern fills her eyes as she watches him limp back into the room. “I couldn’t fix a lot of things.” Her head tilts, a coil of gray hair falling from the clasp of her bun. “Do you still see him? Draco?”  
  
Malfoy presses bare feet into the arm of his couch. “You’ve done right by me, you know.” He stands and he’s glorious, frozen at seventeen because that’s the last reference Severus has. The last words he’d had were, ‘I’ve always looked at you,’ and he hadn’t been able to say it then. The words, ‘I’ve always looked back,’ even though they were the truest words he’d ever had. Truer than anything he’d ever felt for Lily Evans. He’d yelled, tossed Malfoy out and now he’s cursed to relive the hateful things he’d spat into a face he loved so well. The scenarios change, the words twist at times, but the sentiment behind them is the same. “I’m _just_ as I was.” Malfoy looks down at himself. “My hair’s gotten longer the way it would have, my robes are more mature, my fingernails even grow. I am _just_ as I would be. I’m perfect in your memory. I couldn’t ask for a better biographer.”  
  
“Severus,” Pomfrey says. “You need to take the antivenin. You haven’t been.” She sets a small vial down on his mantle. She bites her lip and turns away. She turns back before she can talk herself out of it. “You don’t see him with it, do you?”  
  
Severus stares into Malfoy’s open, _alive_ eyes. Malfoy stares back. Severus doesn’t look away until Pomfrey leaves. He’s not far behind her.  
  
_Treachery_.  
  
It won’t be long before Pomfrey, or flunkies she’s drafted into service, lace his wine with antivenin.  
  
He’d tried. He’d lived with knowing he’d killed Malfoy for a year, that he’d rejected and belittled him until the boy all but threw himself in front of a curse. Then the venom had done its work, snaking through the wrinkles of his brain, pressing and pushing until it dragged out the fantasy he wanted. And then he had forgotten more than he remembered that Malfoy was gone. And now there is no going back to _before_.  
  
The Bloody Baron likes him insane, gets a sick sort of amusement from it. Severus has to admit he’s partial as well.  
  
Malfoy corners him against the willow, wraps his arms around Severus’ shoulders because he’s frozen in loving him, frozen in this affection. “I got the research grant in Pelotas,” he says, grinning. It’s rare and unique and stunning. The letter is still sitting open, unfolded on his desk. _Severus Snape, we’re pleased to inform…_  
  
Because he knew it couldn’t last forever.  
  
“Oh,” he says blankly. The Beltane bonfires blaze a thick wall of heat against Malfoy’s back.  
  
“Don’t ‘oh,’” Malfoy admonishes. “There’s Floo and Apparition. We’re wizards, we’ll find work-arounds. Guilhem – _His Bloodyness_ will need you besides.”  
  
“Of course,” Severus murmurs, barely moving his lips. He presses his palms more heavily into Malfoy’s back, pushes him closer.  
  
Malfoy’s breath is warm against his neck. “Having a good time, Professor?”  
  
Severus’ lips curl at the corners. “I may have found something _enjoyable_ to distract me from the idiots leaping through flames.”  
  
He can feel the bristled edge of Malfoy’s smile against his skin. “I am very pleased to hear that, sir.”  
  
Severus closes his eyes, rests his cheek against the halo of golden hair. “I’ve tendered my resignation to Minerva this afternoon,” he slips in smoothly. Malfoy tips his head up, digs his chin into Severus’ chest. “I’ve taken a position at a small lab in Pelotas. They’re in dire need of competent Potions Masters.” Malfoy’s whole face lights up.  
  
“Purely coincidental, I’m sure,” he says conspiratorially.  
  
“It’s a… work-around,” Severus says carefully.  
  
“That it is.” Malfoy grins and he’s warm and solid and here with him. Severus will keep him that way for as long as he can.

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Major Character Death


End file.
